Wednesday, November 13, 2013

What are you willing to live for?

32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C

If you were arrested for being a Christian,

would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Deacon John William McMullen

This
past summer our family went to a wedding Mass in a church where there was no
air-conditioning. The church was sweltering hot – so hot that I had to remove
my suit jacket. Many of the other men also removed their jackets as well. And
when it came time for the gospel reading, when I went to stand up, my shirt was
stuck to the hot wooden pew – as were the other men's shirts – and it was so hot that
the varnish on the pews had become gooey and stuck to our shirts. Don’t get me wrong, I love Mass and
I love to sing, but even I must admit that this wedding mass was a grueling
experience given the extreme heat.

But
then I thought what a small problem to have compared to being persecuted or
suffering death for our faith!

Imagine being arrested for being a
Catholic Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

When we
consider all that the saints and martyrs before us sacrificed and risked to
practice their faith, we must admit that ours is a comfortable Christianity.
Most of us can openly go to church any Saturday or Sunday that we
want. Yet many skip church if the Mass conflicts with a sporting event or
concert.

Those
who have gone before us were willing to give everything, including their lives,
for the sake of the gospel!

Why
were they willing to lay down their lives for Christ?

What is
it that gave them hope that their deaths would not be the end?

Imagine a world where it is illegal to be a Catholic or Christian.
Imagine that it was illegal to go to Mass. Imagine it being illegal to gather
for community worship.

Unfortunately, we do not have to imagine this. It is happening right
now in parts of the world.

Many of our brothers and sisters in the faith have risked their lives
to fulfill their Sunday obligation by attending Mass today! And it seems every
weekend a different set of Catholics has been attacked and put to death in
Pakistan, Egypt, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Mauritania, Mali, Sri
Lanka, Saudi Arabia, or other parts of the world.

In North Korea
Christians are tortured, imprisoned and murdered; subject to public
execution. 70,000 Christians are believed to be incarcerated in various
prison camps in North Korea, veritable concentration camps.

And off
the coast of the Red Sea in the Eritrean Desert there is a Military Prison camp
where the authorities use the metal shipping containers to hold prisoners.

100,000,000
Christians today face interrogation, arrest, torture or even murder because of
their faith.

Others face public executions by hangings, firing
squads, torture, beatings, whippings, beheadings, stoning to death.* (The Global War on Christians by John Allen).

It is stories like these cause each of us to question
ourselves: Would I be willing to die for
my faith in Jesus Christ?

Therefore
while our brother and sister Christians risk their lives to worship as a
community on Sunday, what is our excuse?

For some it’s too
much to drive an extra five minutes to Mass

Others have to shop on the weekends.

Still others have
sporting events on the weekend.

Or Sunday is their only day to sleep in.

Others are more honest. One person flat
out told me:I really don’t have time for it anymore.

On any
given Sunday only about 30% of all Catholics in the U.S. will go to Mass.

This is
astonishing, especially when we
look to our ancestors in the faith who were willing to suffer martyrdom – in
order to give witness to their faith – and the number of Christians being
persecuted and being martyred today. Ours is a faith that millions are and have
been willing to die for.

The religious
persecution of today is similar to what the Jewish people were experiencing in
today’s first reading
from Second Maccabees. A family of the Jewish faithful are being tortured to
death for their belief in the Lord God, but the
Jews died for their faith rather than disobeying God’s Commandments.

And despite the fact that they were suffering injustice,
they believed that they would rise again.

Then in
today’s gospel, the Sadducees – who did not believe in the existence of the
human soul or the resurrection of the dead – come to Jesus and engage him in a
ridiculous argument.

The
Sadducees had a “what you see is what you get” mentality; they believed that this
earthly existence is all there is, all that matters.

So in a
very real way, the belief in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting clashes
with the belief that this life is all there is.

“You’re
born, you live, then you die.” Isn’t that what many people say today?

But
Jesus points to the age to come, of the resurrected life.

So what
is this resurrection of the dead that we believe in, that we profess every
Sunday?

I look
forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Do we
really look forward to this?

Our fervent hope as Catholic Christians
is that we will rise on the last day when Christ will come again.

Our Baptism unites us with the Risen
Lord Jesus Christ; and so in a mysterious way we already participate in the
heavenly life. Our eternal life begins at our baptism!

And at the Second Coming
of Christ, our bodies will be raised in a way that goes beyond our imagination
and understanding. Our resurrected bodies will be made incorrupt and they will
be rejoined to our souls. All people, the good and the evil, will be raised
from the dead on the last day.This will be
"the hour when all who are in the tombs will hear [the voice of the Son of
Man] and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and
those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment" (John 5:29).

St. John of the
Cross said that before the believer is really ready to undertake the spiritual
journey he or she must be “deeply struck by the shortness of life…and the need
for profound repentance from sin and wholehearted surrender to God” (The Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 1;1).

The reality of death gives an urgency to our lives.

So then
how should we live—especially in the face of persecution and the threat of
death?

“…Our
participation in the Eucharist already gives us a foretaste of Christ's
transfiguration of our bodies: so our bodies, which partake of the Eucharist,
are no longer corruptible, but possess the hope of resurrection” (CCC 997).

The second century theologian
Tertullian wrote: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

What is
it that gave them hope that their deaths would not be the end?

It was
and is because of the hope in the Resurrection of the Dead, the resurrection of
Jesus Christ; this is what gave them the courage to risk their lives, to die for
their faith and this is what gives us the courage to live for Christ.

If we
were to die for our friendship with Christ, would there be enough
evidence to convict us?

Or would we abandon Him as soon as we learn that the
church doesn’t have air-conditioning?

About Me

John William McMullen has written and taught for over twenty years. He is the author of several books: The Miracle of Stalag 8A - Beauty Beyond the Horror; The Last Blackrobe of Indiana and the Potawatomi Trail of Death; Roman: Unparalleled Outrage; Poor Souls; and Eugene & the Haunted Train Bridge. He is a Philosophy Professor, Theologian, and Historian. McMullen resides in Evansville, Indiana, with his wife and children.